EPILOGUE
More than a year later, on a beautiful early-summer day in Paris, Sally was walking down the rue de Varenne on the way home from her job near the Invalides. Bright red geraniums hung lavishly from window boxes, and a gentle breeze was blowing.
Sally no longer lived in the apartment she had shared with Brian, but in a tiny flat on a quiet street in Montparnasse. She had not returned to Tallahassee after all, because she had realized it was too late. Her own life had begun. She worked for an American professor who was in Paris on sabbatical. Her job consisted of filing things, proofreading his book, taking care of correspondence and phone calls in English, and, when the French wasn’t too complicated, looking up bits of information he needed. Her French was improving, and she was able to help him more all the time. She was lucky to have the job. The professor and his wife had been kind to her in many ways. She had a few friends, too— mostly Americans, but one or two French people. She and Otis Miller kept in touch faithfully. She never saw Tom or Francine.
On the rue de Varenne, the forbidding heavy iron doors that lined the sidewalks were flung open, revealing sober, majestic facades and leafy courtyards dappled with sun. Passing one of these open doors, Sally looked into a courtyard and saw Michèle Zanon.
She had no idea why he would be in Paris. They had not communicated since she left Venice. He was standing under a spreading tree, deep in conversation with a man she didn’t recognize. He wore a dark blue business suit with a yellow rosebud in the buttonhole. He had not yet noticed her as she stood looking into the courtyard.
She was living in Paris. Dangerous and extraordinary things had happened to her. She took a step forward and cleared her throat before she said hello.
THE END
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MAGIC MIRROR, a Parisian murder mystery.
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What they said about MAGIC MIRROR:
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—Publisher’s Weekly
“(Michaela Thompson has) given us a fresh new heroine in Georgia Lee Maxwell … She is a delight, a right and funny lady with a breezy narrative voice.”
—Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
Or try another Carnival season mystery:
Julie Smith’s NEW ORLEANS MOURNING.
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Also by Michaela Thompson:
HURRICANE SEASON
MAGIC MIRROR
PAPER PHOENIX
A TEMPORARY GHOST
FAULT TREE
RIPTIDE
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About the Author
MICHAELA THOMPSON is the author of seven mystery novels, all of them originally published under the name Mickey Friedman. She grew up on the Gulf Coast in the Northwest Florida Panhandle, the locale described in Hurricane Season, and still spends a significant amount of time there. She has worked as a newspaper reporter and a freelance journalist, and has contributed mystery short stories to a number of anthologies. She and her husband, Alan Friedman, live in New York City.
Praise for FAULT TREE by Michaela Thompson:
“[Michaela Thompson] presents us with what is perhaps the off-beat thriller of the year, part mystery, part mysticism, difficult to categorize but easy to enjoy.”
—SAN DIEGO UNION
“[Thompson] cleverly weaves threads of past and present into a cogent tale that speeds the reader through mystic India and home again in an adventure that both thrills and logically unveils an elusive mystery.”
—LIBRARY JOURNAL
“Full of danger and breathless action … Very skillfully plotted. There are well-laid clues to reward the reader who is not swept away. Another cornerstone of [Thompson’s] writing is carefully researched and vividly drawn settings. Her Indian cities and countrysides are as convincing as the Florida coast in Hurricane Season.”
—SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
FAULT TREE
BY
MICHAELA THOMPSON
booksBnimble Publishing
New Orleans, La.
Fault Tree
The characters, events and organizations in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, events or organizations is coincidental.
Copyright © 1984 by Michaela Thompson
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover by Andy Brown
eBook ISBN: 9781625173034
Originally published by E. P. Dutton, Inc. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto.
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Prologue
India, 1972
Marina’s knees jerked and she awakened from a dream of falling. The chant in her head dissolved into the chatter of her fellow passengers. A damp spot on the greasy window of the bus showed where her forehead had touched it. She tried to swallow a bitter taste.
The chant was lurking, waiting to start up again, caught in her brain like an advertising jingle. Guru Nagarajan, Parama Sukhadam. Guru Nagarajan, Chrana Shranam. After Nagarajan had been taken away she had listened to them all night, Catherine and the other two, their voices wavering, trailing off, then coming back louder and stronger. Exiled as she had been from the first, she sat alone on her bed mat, then later moved out to the veranda.
Palika Road wasn’t sleeping either. Shadowy figures moved along it; lights flickered in the mud-colored houses that were hardly more than huts. Wails from the house of the More family made the hair on her arms stand up.
At first light the chanting had stopped and the three of them appeared on the veranda—Catherine, Joe, who was a spindly boy with acne, and plain, round-faced Denise in her wire-rimmed glasses. They looked gray in the gray light, and she could hardly see their faces. They ignored her, brushing past her to descend the steps, until she cleared her throat and said, “Where are you going?”
Catherine hesitated, then turned toward her with the reluctance Marina had come to expect. “To the jail. To see Nagarajan.” Her voice, hoarse from chanting, was almost a whisper.
At one time, Marina would have said the things that came into her mind: that the police were unlikely to let Nagarajan’s followers visit him, that walking down Palika Road might be dangerous under the circumstances, that the best thing would be to wait. Now, she said, “OK.”
Catherine started toward the others, then returned to Marina. She reached out and took Marina�
�s wrist, and Marina’s knees gave slightly. Marina looked down at the cheap bangles on Catherine’s thin arm, the ring with a pink stone on her middle finger. She didn’t want to look at Catherine’s face, but when Catherine didn’t let go Marina’s eyes moved upward. Catherine’s hair, the hair Nagarajan admired so much, hung greasy and limp. Shadowed by the edge of her sari, her face seemed sunken. “You’re happy now. This is what you wanted,” Catherine croaked.
Marina wondered if Catherine could feel the tremor that moved through her body. It came, not from fear, but from a weird exultation that Catherine had, voluntarily, touched her, spoken to her.
She wet her lips, trying to choose a response, but Catherine let go and turned away. Marina watched them cross the strip of packed earth to the gate, then go down the road in the growing light. They had not returned when, in the blazing midmorning, Marina splashed her body with tepid water, put on fresh clothes, and went to catch the bus from Halapur to Bombay.
Guru Nagarajan, Parama Sukhadam. Guru Nagarajan, Chrana Shranam. Guru Nagarajan, Eternal giver of happiness. Guru Nagarajan, We take refuge at his feet. The damp spot her forehead had made was dry now, another smudge on a window covered with smudges. Now on the return journey, she watched the outskirts of Halapur come into view and slide past as they neared the center of town. Bullocks nosed the earth in the blasted garden of the District Administration Center. Posters of men with guns chasing other men with guns were plastered outside the Town Talkies movie theater. An old man laboriously pedaled a bicycle whose rear baskets were full of empty milk bottles.
The staff at the consulate in Bombay was accustomed to seeing Marina, and usually paid little attention to her. Today it had been different, because of Nagarajan’s arrest. She was allowed to see someone right away. The plastic nameplate beside the door said “M. Hayes.”
“A situation like this brings out strong feelings,” Mr. Hayes said. “The Indian people don’t understand these Westerners claiming to be practicing some form of Hinduism, and many of them don’t particularly like it.” Despite the heat, his tie was knotted tightly at the neck of his white short-sleeved shirt. The blinds were drawn against the glare, and the breeze from the ceiling fan stirred the papers on his desk and Marina’s damp hair. If only she could bend and rest her head on the arm of her chair she could sleep.
“Strong feelings,” Mr. Hayes said. “We’ll send someone this afternoon. How many did you say are living there?”
She roused herself to answer. “People come and go all the time, but right now there are my sister and me and two other Americans. An Indian man named Joginder looks after the place, but he doesn’t live there. Compared with some of the other sects, it’s very small.”
“I suppose this Nagarajan is claiming he didn’t kill the boy?”
“I don’t know. Nobody at the ashram has told me anything. They went this morning to try to see him, but they hadn’t gotten back when I left.”
Perspiration had made yellow stains under the arms of Mr. Hayes’s shirt. “I wish to God these kids would all stay home,” he said.
The bus pulled up at Halapur’s central square, causing its usual flurry of quickly extinguished interest in the passersby. As always, a knot of men squatted under the peepul tree chewing betel, and women lingered at the public pump, balancing babies or clay jars on their hips, while birds fluttered in the spilled water curling over the muddy stones. When Marina stepped out of the bus, the sun hit her face like a slap. She started back through town to the ashram.
Black birds wheeled against the hot blue sky. A bullock cart rattled past her, raising dust that settled in her throat. When she reached Palika Road, she heard a roaring sound that suggested nothing. The sound had been in her ears several minutes before it occurred to her that it might be voices, and she saw the mass of people far down toward the ashram. As she continued walking, shading her eyes, a figure detached itself and ran toward her. It was Joginder, his turban disarranged, his eyes bloodshot. “Come away, miss!” he cried, and when she stood, confused, he gestured violently. Something in his movement animated her, and she followed him down a side street, stumbling, infected by his terror.
They passed a bicycle repair shed, its dirt yard filled with bicycles swaying against one another, and went through a gate into an earthen courtyard. Three string cots almost filled the small space, and bedraggled chickens scratched and pecked in the shade of a dusty, broad-leafed tree. Joginder sank down on one of the cots, trembling, and she said, “Joginder, what’s happening?”
“It is burning,” he said, and at that instant she smelled smoke.
California
Ten Years Later
1
RISK
Things you should know about risk:
Risk is always present. There is no such thing as zero risk.
Actual risk may differ greatly from perceived risk.
If you reduce risk, you may reduce benefits.
You must decide what level of risk is acceptable for your situation.
Excerpt from Why Breakdown? — company brochure for Breakdown, Inc.
The Fun World maintenance chief breathed heavily. Maybe he had emphysema. “—inspected daily,” he was saying. “Nothing like this ever happened—”
But now it has, Marina thought, and what that means is just dawning on you. The sky was dark now, the wind steady and cold. The ambulances had left, but the television people were still around, preparing their stories for the eleven o’clock news.
The maintenance chief looked about sixty. His face was yellow in the glare of the lights. When talk about blame started— and it had started already, she imagined, on the news bulletins— the maintenance crew would be the first to go up against the wall. There would be portentous discussions about “human error,” as if most things didn’t go wrong because a human made a mistake at one point or another. “Every day,” the chief said. His words had a phlegmy roughness. “Mr. Bolton insists.”
It took Marina a moment or two to put together: “Mr. Bolton” and Bobo the Clown. “Why would it break?” the chief said, and began to gargle and wheeze.
Marina looked past the maintenance chief’s pinkening ear. It was time for a cup of coffee. She disliked these scenes— the self-justification, the assertions of blamelessness, the constant terror of being found to be in the wrong. People never realized that charm, self-pity, excuses couldn’t change what the numbers told her and were a waste of her time. She’d look at the records and make the measurements, and if the maintenance chief had done his job right he’d be OK. Meanwhile— “Excuse me,” she said, and walked away.
She went to pick up her kit, one of the leather cases she and her colleagues, with heavy irony, called their “doctor’s bags”— and stopped to listen to a wispy teenaged girl talking to a television crew. A drop of blood had dried under one of the girl’s nostrils. “They were having a good time,” the girl said. “Laughing and all. They rode twice.”
A woman in a blazer checked a clipboard. “You’re talking about Randy and Annette Wilson?”
“The fat ones.”
The girl looked shocked, but excited too, and gratified at the attention she was getting. Marina had seen it dozens of times. First you had to coax and cajole the story out of them and then, about the time you had all you needed, they started to like it and wouldn’t leave you alone.
She wiped her hands on the front of the jumpsuit she wore over her jeans, picked up her bag, and took another look at Loopy Doop.
It was beautiful. Magnificent, really, with its long, spiderlike legs ending in bright pink-and-yellow gondolas. A lovely, elegant design. What a shame that an hour or so ago one of those attenuated steel legs had given way and sent the gondola carrying Randy and Annette Wilson, who liked Loopy Doop enough to ride it twice in a row, smashing into the ticket booth.
She had taken a close look as soon as she arrived, while they were still loading Randy and Annette and the ticket-taker and the kid and his mother who’d been buying tickets
into ambulances and hoping they might make it to the hospital. The leg had broken right next to the hub. She had eyeballed the fracture, photographed it, and made an impression of the surface with dental imprint material. She could tell by looking that it was a fatigue failure caused by the steel tubing bending back and forth. What had caused it to bend was another question.
She’d have to get someone to come out with a saw to cut the fracture surface out and take it back to the lab so she could study it and have specimens made up for tests.
A shame. It had been beautiful.
She picked her way through the shards of glass around the wrecked ticket booth and went to look for coffee.
2
Marina got out her notebook and started a list.
She had: taken the photos, made a sketch of the scene, gotten names and phone numbers of witnesses, examined and made an imprint of the break. She needed to: get the Loopy Doop specifications from somebody, the inspection records from somebody— she’d ask the maintenance chief, if he’d gotten his breath back— get the piece of Loopy Doop’s leg sawed off.
She sipped watery coffee from a Styrofoam cup. In the background, a radio murmured about “the Loopy Doop disaster.” She was sitting in the Bobobar, a juice bar that had been left open when the park was closed after the accident. A bigger-than-life-sized Bobo the Clown was stenciled on the wall in red.
It was chance that she’d been at the office and the maintenance chief had gotten her instead of the service. This was going to be a big case— exactly the macabre kind of scenario the press adored, which meant Sandy would probably take it himself. So what if she’d been here first and done the groundwork?
The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries Page 65